Welcome to Windows 7 Forums. Our forum is dedicated to helping you find support and solutions for any problems regarding your Windows 7 PC be it Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or a custom build. We also provide an extensive Windows 7 tutorial section that covers a wide range of tips and tricks.

Windows 7: People Do Walk in Circles When Lost

As hinted at in books, folklore tales and scary movies, people seem to actually have the tendency of walking in circles when they are lost, or when they do not have any landmarks nearby to guide them on the correct path. The new study was conducted by a team of experts from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tubingen, Germany, who were led by psychologist Jan Souman. The scientist is also the first author of the investigation.

Souman's team is experienced in studying perception and action, and it was contacted by the producers of a reality show for the new research. It had received a question from its audience, as to whether it was true people who were lost walked in circles. “We didn't really know, but we thought it was an interesting question,” the scientist says, quoted by ScienceNow. So, a number of experiments was devised, aimed at seeing whether people, indeed, walked in circular patterns rather than straight ahead.

Some 15 test participants were blindfolded in one experiment, and outfitted with GPS receivers, and then sent to walk in a straight line across a field. Some of them managed to achieve this objective, although they too deviated from their original course considerably. But a number of volunteers walked in circles as small as 20 meters. Previous attempts at explaining this behavior have it that it's the length of the feet that causes this to happen, as, in all people, one of their feet is shorter than the other.

In an attempt to disprove this, the German team exaggerated the natural length difference between the feet, and made some participants wear a 12-millimeter-thick-sole shoe in just one foot. No clear correlation between adding the sole and a larger tendency of walking in circles was discovered, the experts say. Their complete results appear in the latest online issue of the scientific journal Current Biology.

The team proposes that the human brain plays an important role in preventing this from happening, in the sense that walking blindfolded deprives it of a large number of sensory inputs. When participants were made to walk in a straight line in a forest, and then again in the Sahara desert, without any cover on their eyes, they showed an increased level of accuracy in keeping to a straight line. Changes in direction appeared in the forests, but only on clouded days, when the Sun was not directly visible.

I was going to joke saying it is because we have one leg longer than the other, I can't believe they actually thought it was the cause!!! Then they realized blondfolding people might have something to do with it... oh boy..
Good post for the chillout room!

Well maybe off topic but once i saw a car crash happend 10 meters in front of my car.. and when i pass them i stop to see what happend . Luckly nobody was dead or hurt badly but all the people that go out of the cars were walking in small circles. somebody in bigger somebody in smaller circle paths... it was really funny and unbeliavable... They where pretty shaken back then maybe somebody of them didn't know what happend at all...

Upgrade to 10 from 7 goes in circlesI formatted a old laptop HDD and put W10 on it using their media creation tool downloaded onto a USB. It worked fine except that I installed W10 pro and not W10 Home and it would not let me activate the new W10 because you have to upgrade compatible versions. It knew I had W7 home from my W7...

Installation & Setup

MY Computer Knows When I go to Walk Away?Every time my wife or I get up from our computers it makes the disconnected sound as we just unplugged headphones or something from the USB ports. It is almost as if the computer acknowledges us leaving the computer. Does anyone have an idea what is causing this?

Sound & Audio

Strange Concentric Circles on DesktopI have no idea if this is a graphics problem or not, but the desktop display has broken concentric red circles on it.
This is an HP Pavilion g7-1158nr running W7HP SP1 64. I just updated the graphics driver in a vain attempt to correct it. It doesn't seem to interfere with the normal working...

PC reboots if someone walk byMy PC reboots if someone walks by the machine or if I touch the metal part of eSATA or USB connector(not connector contacts). It appear to have something to do with electrostatic discharge. I am using AC power connector having three pins. This never happened with my old machine.
Any suggestion...